Monday, March 3, 2014

Life/gay advice that I should also be heeding

So my friend R, who I describe as one of my few sensible gay friends, messaged me about this cute guy again. He told me the guy initiated the conversation on Grindr, and then said that R was cute, and in a bid to get his attention away from other hot guys on Grindr, R asked for his phone number to Whatsapp him instead. When the conversation got to Whatsapp, the Grindr dude did not reply.

He asked me what he did wrong. He said he sent a text to see if the guy received the whatsapp, and that was 5 hours ago.

He told me he's worried that the guy ran off with a hotter guy, or saw R's pictures on instagram linked to his Grindr profile + his Whatsapp pic and decided he wasn't cute anymore. He told me that he has changed his Grindr caption to be "Mates and dates more than NSA" and said he shouldn't be scaring off anyone. He asked me what he should do now, and how he should "sell" himself better. He cited how I met N on Jack'd, and how his Polish friend met his boyfriend on Grindr.

It is really frustrating talking to R. Then again, he is probably like many gay people out there. He has somehow decided that the world is only to be ran by hot guys, and everyone else has no place.

I told him that firstly he didn't do anything wrong, that maybe the guy was busy, or maybe he simply wasn't interested anymore. Who cares? I told him he has to take it less personally, and that he needs to realize that a person can't be summed up in just one picture, and if someone decides to pass on you because on one picture so be it, there'll be someone who'll like to talk to you more than just from one picture.,,

Secondly, I told him to get rid of the ridiculously cliched Mates and Dates shit, and the NSA fuckshit. I told him not to become one of those vacuous Grindr zombies out there - mates and dates? who you kidding that line is fucking stupid, and also, let's face it - everyone's on Grindr for sex first, and then for making friends second. Saying that you want to make friends and omg like I am an innocent lil cabbage patch kid that wants to only MAKE FRIENDS is just basically telling the Grindr world "I see no value in myself in this app that is clearly geared for sex and thus I am a cop-out and wanna wish for world peace with me instead?" Keep it more real, go along the lines of "Here on exchange for the semester and having a blast so far. Always up for meeting new people" or something is at least a lot better than motherfucking mates and dates.

Third, I told him to really get a grip on himself. Yes. R is not hot. So what? It's not as if hotness is on some kind of objective black and white scale. I told him that you are the sum of a lot more than just looks and a few pictures. It doesn't matter if people reject you, especially in the world of Grindr where you just need to try very hard to emotionally detach yourself in such a transactional environment. As long as there's someone, just one, who kinda likes you enough at the start to give you guys a shot. That's all really. And if the guy doesn't reply, that's actually kinda good too, because that means it wouldn't have worked out anyway so it's good you didn't invest more time there.

Fourth, I told him how good looking people are usually not all that at all. He cited how they can be douchebags and yet people still worship them, and how they get it easier for everything in life. I told him the biggest problem is that good looking people tend to think the same way that he does too. People who worship douchebags, are invariably fucking stupid themselves and have very low self-esteem. Why do you care about these worshippers? Do you actually want these kind of worshippers, or actual friends who tell you to keep up the good work in whatever you're doing? Hot people also tend to feel that just because they're hot, everything in life should be really easy for them, which more often than not results in the vase syndrome, where basically everything else about the person is mentally stunted beyond repair. Zero personality. Zero sense of humor. I told him how N used to model, but so many of the male models he met had drug and alcohol problems because they thought they were the kings of the world. Many also internalized the biting scathing criticism of the industry and projected this to everything else in their lives, and have unrealistically high standards for everything, and crumble when these standards aren't met. I also told him how N has dated a few jawdroppingly hot male models before, but he said that they never really connected because it's like yes he's hot yes the sex is good but wait, now what?

I also explained to him that he needs to get real, and that Grindr and Jack'd are just for sex. Sure, you'll make some friends along the way, but this is no place to find a lifelong partner. People like N don't use these apps. I was incredibly incredibly lucky that I found him on Jack'd the second or third day that he decided to use it again at the behest of his friends who told him he really needed to start dating again and to move on from his ex-boyfriend. Before that, he didn't use it for six months because he was just so depressed by how he was just fucking guys to fill the hole in his heart but it never worked. In the same vein, N was pretty lucky that even though I was cruising for hot guys on Jack'd because I was also crushed over S, I took a big leap of faith in the end and gave it a shot and look where we are now. For R's Polish friend, first off his boyfriend and he started out as purely fuckbuddies, and they slept around a lot, but finally ended up together, but still slept around and cheated a lot, but now have decided to be monogamous. So, it always starts with sex.

Lastly, I told him to delete the app for a while because it's obviously taking a toll on him. For these two weeks of deleting Grindr and Jack'd, I told him to not see this as potentially maybe missing opportunities that might sweep him off his feet and become the knight in shining armor to rescue him from his maudlin plight. Who cares about missed connections? People lose out on opportunities ALL the time - what matters really is how mentally primed you are to seize the opportunity when it comes knocking. Right now, R is not at all in the right state of things, and so fuck the apps. Once he can dust himself off and actually see the goodness in him, then things will be a lot more natural and he would be a lot less forced to "sell" himself.

R thanked me in the end and said it was like a gay TED talk for him. Hah! Honestly, I feel that all the above are incredibly basic. In a way, it's pretty clear to me now that quite a lot of people spend a lot of time mired in their own insecurities to really see the bigger picture of things.

This is definitely hypocritical advice on my end because I've somehow still been having bad dreams at night of my former bosses criticizing my work and questioning my self-worth. How pathetic is that? It has deeply affected me that so far my two full-time jobs I've lasted only barely 4 months in each, and I'm already 25. I've done zero GMAT prep and I really am just not feeling this GMAT shit at all, but I also don't want to sell myself short if I could actually get into LBS, but didn't even apply because I was too lazy to do a stupid test.

I'm also quite afraid of being away from Asia for the next 3 years. I used to jump at any opportunity to be away from "repressive Asia" but now I realized I was just repressing myself all along, and that I've become so incredibly comfortable here that it's just terrifying to imagine myself being so far from home and away from family. I will miss everyone so much. My dad actually teared up when he was talking to N and I about going off to London. He said it's really unexpected but he knows that I have to do it, and he said he was going to miss me so much, and asked N to really take care of me, because in some ways I'm a big baby. I've not really seen my dad choke up a lot, so I felt pretty sad. I used to paint such a horrific picture of my dad, both in my head and to other people and even on this blog, but I was really just so caught up with my own anger and resentment that I blamed everything on him, when honestly, I am the fucking luckiest person in the world to have him as my dad. I am so incredibly happy that my relationship with my parents are better than ever, and my whole family has become more functional than it has ever been for the last 5 years. I owe everything to my dad and my mom, and I truly love them so very much.

3 comments:

It's always easier to give advice because we can be more objective with others. For ourselves, while we intellectually know what we should do, often times we face emotional barriers that prevent us from acting. If you ever watch the Dr. Phil Show, he calls this the "why lie" that we tell ourselves.

For you to overcome this you have to be honest with yourself and have some insight. Moving away from your support system will be difficult, but you can adapt and you will have N there to back you. You won't be totally alone.

I think if you had some success, even though it may seem small, that will slowly regain your confidence after the difficulty with these first two jobs. Getting past the GMAT could be your immediate goal. Once you start having forward momentum again, things may come easier for you. Of course, you still need to put in effort -- hoping and wishing is not an action plan.

There are millions of gay guys out there exactly like R. His attitude and behavior are the rule not the exception.

R's problem is that he's only attracted to certain guys - the hot ones. Sure he could go on a date with an average looking guy, a 6, but he already knows nothing will come of it. He won't be attracted to the guy, so why bother? When a hot guy pays attention to him he gets all excited and his self-esteem hangs on everything the hot guys says or does. But hot guys are just like him. They're only motivated when they're trying to land another hot guy. This is the way we gay men are - we're only attracted to good looking guys and we'd rather date no one than date down.

I'd be surprised if you could convince R to start meeting guys who message him who he's not attracted to but that would be a viable bf strategy.

Another strategy, one he might actually consider, is to hit on good looking guys who are at least five years older than him. In the gay world, youth and beauty together always win, but when that's not possible, youth matters a lot.

Don't worry about work so much. Sooner rather later, you'll find a path that makes you happy. As with finding N, sometimes it's a matter of good luck...and was with R, sometimes its a matter of developing a good plan and having patience.

One thing though, R has historically been hooking up with guys who are indeed older than him. He's 23 now, and for a while he was friends with benefits with a 41 year old guy, who he insists looks 35, but yeah, he does like guys 10 years older than him.